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Monacan Indian Nation

The Monacan Indian Nation is a
state-recognized Indian tribe whose tribal area is located near Bear Mountain in Amherst County. The original
territory of the Siouan-speaking
tribe and its allies comprised more than half of present-day Virginia, including
almost all of the Piedmont region and parts of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Early in the twenty-first
century about 1,600 Monacans belonged to the tribe, one of the oldest groups of
indigenous people still existing in its ancestral homeland, and the only group in the
state whose culture descends from Eastern Siouan speakers. MORE...

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Scholars believe that thousands of years ago, in the Ohio River Valley, the
Siouan-speaking people lived as a unified group, and that eventually the tribes moved
both east and west, separating into the Eastern and Western Siouan speakers. Monacan
Indians spoke a language related to other Eastern Siouan tribes, such as the Tutelo.
The Monacan people are also related to the Occaneechi and Saponi peoples located in
present-day North Carolina, and they were affiliated with the Mannahoac Indians, who
occupied the northern Piedmont in what is now Virginia.

When the first English settlers founded Jamestown in 1607, the
Monacan lived above the falls of the James River and were traditional enemies of the Algonquian-speaking Indians
of Tsenacomoco. Powhatan, the paramount chief of Tsenacomoco,
had discouraged the Englishmen from visiting the Monacan, but in September 1608, Christopher Newport and 120
men set out anyway, traveling forty to fifty miles beyond the falls. After kidnapping
a Monacan political leader to act as a guide, Newport and his party visited the towns of Mowhemicho and
Massanack, while mapping three others: Rassaweck, Monasukapanough, and Monahassanugh.
According to English reports, Rassaweck, on the James River, was the principal
Monacan town. The area in general, John
Smith wrote, was a "faire, fertill, well watred countrie," but it did not
boast the mineral wealth for which Newport was hoping, and the Englishmen soon
retreated back to Tsenacomoco.

Traditionally, Monacan people buried the remains of
their dead in sacred earthen mounds constructed over time. These mounds, excavated by
archaeologists and others, have been the site of secondary burials. In other words,
many corpses were exhumed and reburied during periodic ceremonies. Thirteen such
mounds have been found throughout the Blue Ridge and Piedmont regions, similarly
constructed, some more than a thousand years old. In his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), Thomas Jefferson
wrote that in the mid-1750s several Indians had been observed visiting one of the mounds on the Rivanna River and in or about 1784 directed an excavation of the burial mound.
Located in Albemarle County,
the mound's location, according to a map published by John Smith, lies in what was
Monacan territory, but scholars disagree as to whether the mound's builders were
Monacan. Some argue that because most burial mounds are found west of the Piedmont,
the so-called Jefferson's Mound may have been the work of Indians who invaded the
area from the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah Valley. In 2000, after learning of the
possibility of nearby development, the Monacan Indian Nation conducted a blessing
ceremony at the site.

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
most Monacan Indians were living on a settlement near Bear Mountain in Amherst
County. Sometime around 1868, a small log cabin was built and used as a community
church. In 1908, the Episcopal minister Arthur P. Gray Jr. established Saint Paul's
Mission and the Bear Mountain Indian Mission School. The school enrolled students
through the seventh grade until the advent of public school desegregation in 1964. A
fire in 1930 left only the schoolhouse intact, but the church was immediately
rebuilt.

Like other Virginia Indians, the Monacans struggled to preserve their identity and
culture early in the twentieth century. The Racial Integrity Act of 1924 and subsequent
legislation banned interracial marriage in Virginia and asked for voluntary racial
identifications on birth and marriage certificates. "White" was defined as having no
trace of African ancestry, while all other people, including Indians, were defined as
"colored." To accommodate elite Virginians who claimed Pocahontas and John Rolfe as ancestors, the law allowed for those who
had "one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and have no other
non-Caucasic blood [to] be deemed to be white persons." The laws essentially erased
Virginia Indians as a category of people.

By late in the century, however, the tribes had
reasserted their identity. On February 14, 1989, the Monacans were recognized as a
tribe by the Commonwealth of Virginia. In 1995, the Episcopal Diocese returned the
land on which the old mission stood, and the site is now the home of the tribe's
museum and cultural center. The original log cabin was restored and, in 1997, was
added to the National Register of Historic Places. In 2007, a Virginia Historical Highway Marker
was erected at the site.

Time Line

September 1608
- Christopher Newport and 120 men set out to explore the territory beyond the falls of the James River. They visit two Monacan Indian towns, Mowhemicho and Massanack, and map three others.

ca. 1754
- Indians may have been observed conducting a ceremony at a burial mound on the Rivanna River in Albemarle County.

ca. 1784
- Thomas Jefferson directs an archaeological excavation of a burial mound on the Rivanna River in Albemarle County. He publishes his findings in Notes on the State of Virginia.

ca. 1868
- A log cabin is built on Monacan land near Bear Mountain in Amherst County and is used for church services.

1908
- The Episcopal minister Arthur P. Gray Jr. establishes Saint Paul's Mission and the Bear Mountain Indian Mission School on Monacan land in Amherst County.

March 20, 1924
- Governor E. Lee Trinkle signs "An act to Preserve Racial Integrity," a law aimed at protecting whiteness on the state level. It prohibits interracial marriage, defines a white person as someone who has no discernible non-white ancestry, and requires that birth and marriage certificates indicate people's races.

1930
- A fire at Saint Paul's Mission on Monacan land in Amherst County leaves only a schoolhouse intact.

February 14, 1989
- The Monacan tribe receives official state recognition.

1995
- The Episcopal Diocese, which in 1908 had established Saint Paul's Mission on Monacan land in Amherst County, returns the land to the tribe.

1997
- A log cabin built sometime around 1868 on Monacan land near Bear Mountain in Amherst County is added to the National Register of Historic Places.

2000
- After learning of the possibility of nearby development, the Monacan Indian Nation conducts a blessing ceremony at the site of Jefferson's Mound, an excavated burial mound that some believe to be associated with Monacan Indians.

2007
- A Virginia Historical Highway Marker is erected on the site of a log cabin built sometime around 1868 on Monacan land near Bear Mountain in Amherst County.